Of the largest cities, London saw the highest number of arrivals during the period, at a daily average of 1.1 million which was a 14% increase on the same time the previous year.
It is about 10 times higher than Birmingham, the city with the next-highest number of people travelling in every day at 108,400.
But while the mornings on trains in London were busy last year, they were not as crowded as pre-Covid travel.
The figures indicate that people’s travel habits have changed since the pandemic, with more passengers arriving outside the morning peak.
In autumn 2019, 55% of London-bound passengers came in between 7am and 10am. By 2023, that proportion had dropped to 45%.
However, people are continuing to return to their workplaces.
Stripping out the effect of the Elizabeth Line, which was launched in 2022, the figures show that the number of arrivals into major cities in England and Wales dropped by just 73,000, or 4%, between autumn 2019 and autumn 2023.
A spokesperson for the DfT said: “We are bringing operators back under public ownership and leading the biggest overhaul of our railways in a generation.”
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